District 303 lawsuit returns to court next month

May 13, 2014|Stephanie K. Baer, Tribune reporter

Chicago Tribune illustration (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

A lawsuit seeking monetary damages from St. Charles Community Unit School District 303 in the controversial reorganization of Richmond and Davis schools will return to court next month, after the plaintiffs' attorney filed a motion challenging the court's decision to dismiss the case.

On March 24, Tim Dwyer, the plantiffs' attorney, filed the motion to reconsider a Kane County Circuit Court judge's decision to dismiss the class-action suit in February, saying that the court "erroneously applied the law" and misunderstood the issue at hand.

The hearing on the motion to reconsider was originally set for Tuesday, but it was rescheduled for June 4, according to a court order filed Tuesday.

"The defendant would like the trial court to believe that reconfiguration of boundaries is the issue at bar; but it is not," the motion reads. "The issue in this case is whether the district's March 2011 plan forcing all children to attend the failing Richmond School was illegal to the extent that children forced to attend Richmond School have a private right of action under the school code."

The court order, issued by Kane County Circuit Court Judge James Murphy on Feb. 26, said that the state's school code does not allow the court to grant damages in this case because the "plaintiffs' injury was not one the statute was designed to prevent."

"These statutes are designed to improve the school system as a whole by improving the education of students in lower-performing schools," the order read. "Plaintiffs in this case who absented their children from the affected schools by either sending their children to private school or moving from the district are not the ones who have a cognizable injury or the persons the statues are designed to protect."

The suit, which lists two parents and "all others similarly situated" as plaintiffs, seeks money for parents who moved their kids out of the district into private schools, moved out of the Davis school boundary to get around the merger, or did neither and were forced to have their kids attend Richmond instead of Davis, according to the original complaint filed last year.

In 2011, 17 parents sued the district and demanded it undo the reorganization of the two schools. At the time, Richmond had failed for three consecutive years to meet federal progress standards mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The state's school code requires districts to give parents the option of transferring their children to a non-failing school in the district after their current school misses the standards for two years. But as a result of the merger, parents were no longer given the option to opt-out of Richmond.

"Once the plaintiffs were forced to attend the failing Richmond School, without any appeal rights, the plaintiffs had no adequate remedy," the motion reads.

Dwyer said on Tuesday that the district has failed to address the fact that parents were forced to send their children to a failing school.

"The district's response is not responsive to the issue," Dwyer said. "What the district wants to talk about is how the reconfiguration was successful."

In a brief filed in response to the motion to reconsider, the district says that the court did not make an error in its decision to dismiss the suit and that the plaintiffs in the case "never even attended the new reconfigured schools."

"Essentially, Plaintiffs are seeking court-ordered vouches for former Davis parents to pay for their children to attend private school, or reimbursement for their choice to move out of the District," reads the brief filed April 17.

Superintendent Don Schlomann said last week that he was only notified about the motion to reconsider recently and had not seen or read the documents.

"I don't really have much to say about it. It is what it is," Schlomann said. "I don't know what the legal arguments are."